Singer Expands Talent To Acting

As a singer trying to establish herself as an actress, Ashanti Douglas says she's open to playing just about any character except the obvious one: a singer.

"That's how I make my other living; I do that in real life, you know?" says Ashanti, who's still better known for her platinum-selling R&B albums than for her movie roles.

"As far as acting is concerned, I live for the challenge, and I want to do something totally different."

The 25-year-old from Glen Cove started out with a string of television appearances -- "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "American Dreams," "The Muppets' Wizard of Oz" -- before graduating to the big screen. Her first real role was as a pregnant teen in the 2005 basketball drama "Coach Carter." At the moment, she's starring as a scheming cheerleader in the teen comedy "John Tucker Must Die," which opened Friday. In the sci-fi thriller "Resident Evil: Extinction," scheduled for release next year, Ashanti will appear as Nurse Betty, a pistol-packing chick who knows her way around a 9mm weapon.

Ashanti may still be waiting for the role that will make her a bona fide star, but in "Tucker," she grabs her biggest share of screen time yet. She plays Heather, a teenager who discovers she's one of three girls dating John Tucker, the captain of the basketball team (played by Jesse Metcalfe). The women conspire to get revenge, but, as you might guess, complications ensue and valuable lessons are learned.

"My agent got the script, and I read it and thought it was really cute," Ashanti says, speaking by phone from the MTV studios while on a whirlwind press junket to promote the movie. She liked Heather's no-nonsense, in-control character, and it helped that Ashanti had been a high-school cheerleader in real life. She also appreciated that Heather's relationship with Tucker is interracial but never an issue in the film.

"I think it was really, really cool," Ashanti says. "And hopefully, it'll make a little progress in reality with it."

But the script gathered dust while Ashanti worked on an album of remixes in Jamaica. Finally the director, Betty Thomas ("The Brady Bunch Movie," "28 Days"), called to recruit her. "She said, 'Look, dude -- you really need to do this movie; it's a great opportunity,' " Ashanti recalls with a laugh. "And I said, 'You know what? I'm going to do it.' And I got on a plane and went to Vancouver."

Ashanti's filming schedule explains why the singer hasn't put out an album since "Concrete Rose" (The Inc.) in 2004. "That gave me the time and the ability to really get focused on the acting," she says. "It was about time to chill out a little bit, you know -- be missed a little bit."

The singer says she's working on new material, and while she sounds excited about it, she sounds even more enthusiastic about the current batch of scripts she's considering.

"I can't say too much about them because we haven't signed on the dotted line, but there are a lot of interesting irons in the fire," she says. "Hopefully, by the next conversation, we'll be talking about the next two flicks." *